OpenRaiser/Intern-Atlas huggingface dataset:
Decompose to manipulate: Manipulable Object Synthesis in 3D Medical Images with Structured Image Decomposition
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

The performance of medical image analysis systems is constrained by the quantity of high-quality image annotations. Such systems require data to be annotated by experts with years of training, especially when diagnostic decisions are involved. Such datasets are thus hard to scale up. In this context, it is hard for supervised learning systems to generalize to the cases that are rare in the training set but would be present in real-world clinical practices. We believe that the synthetic image samples generated by a system trained on the real data can be useful for improving the supervised learning tasks in the medical image analysis applications. Allowing the image synthesis to be manipulable could help synthetic images provide complementary information to the training data rather than simply duplicating the real-data manifold. In this paper, we propose a framework for synthesizing 3D objects, such as pulmonary nodules, in 3D medical images with manipulable properties. The manipulation is enabled by decomposing of the object of interests into its segmentation mask and a 1D vector containing the residual information. The synthetic object is refined and blended into the image context with two adversarial discriminators. We evaluate the proposed framework on lung nodules in 3D chest CT images and show that the proposed framework could generate realistic nodules with manipulable shapes, textures and locations, etc. By sampling from both the synthetic nodules and the real nodules from 2800 3D CT volumes during the classifier training, we show the synthetic patches could improve the overall nodule detection performance by average 8.44% competition performance metric (CPM) score.
Quasi-Polynomial Algorithms for Submodular Tree Orienteering and Other Directed Network Design Problems
Venue: arXiv cs.DS 2019
Year: 2019

We consider the following general network design problem on directed graphs. The input is an asymmetric metric $(V,c)$, root $r^{*}\in V$, monotone submodular function $f:2^V\rightarrow \mathbb{R}_+$ and budget $B$. The goal is to find an $r^{*}$-rooted arborescence $T$ of cost at most $B$ that maximizes $f(T)$. Our main result is a simple quasi-polynomial time $O(\frac{\log k}{\log\log k})$-approximation algorithm for this problem, where $k\le |V|$ is the number of vertices in an optimal solution. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first non-trivial approximation ratio for this problem. As a consequence we obtain an $O(\frac{\log^2 k}{\log\log k})$-approximation algorithm for directed (polymatroid) Steiner tree in quasi-polynomial time. We also extend our main result to a setting with additional length bounds at vertices, which leads to improved $O(\frac{\log^2 k}{\log\log k})$-approximation algorithms for the single-source buy-at-bulk and priority Steiner tree problems. For the usual directed Steiner tree problem, our result matches the best previous approximation ratio [GLL19]. Our algorithm has the advantage of being deterministic and faster: the runtime is $\exp(O(\log n\, \log^{1+ε} k))$. For polymatroid Steiner tree and single-source buy-at-bulk, our result improves prior approximation ratios by a logarithmic factor. For directed priority Steiner tree, our result seems to be the first non-trivial approximation ratio. All our approximation ratios are tight (up to constant factors) for quasi-polynomial algorithms.
Casanova
Venue: arXiv cs.CR 2019
Year: 2019

We introduce Casanova, a leaderless optimistic consensus protocol designed for a permissioned blockchain. Casanova produces blocks in a DAG rather than a chain, and combines voting rounds with block production by singling out individual conflicting transactions.
On the stability analysis of deep neural network representations of an optimal state-feedback
Venue: arXiv cs.NE 2019
Year: 2019

Recent work have shown how the optimal state-feedback, obtained as the solution to the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equations, can be approximated for several nonlinear, deterministic systems by deep neural networks. When imitation (supervised) learning is used to train the neural network on optimal state-action pairs, for instance as derived by applying Pontryagin's theory of optimal processes, the resulting model is referred here as the guidance and control network. In this work, we analyze the stability of nonlinear and deterministic systems controlled by such networks. We then propose a method utilising differential algebraic techniques and high-order Taylor maps to gain information on the stability of the neurocontrolled state trajectories. We exemplify the proposed methods in the case of the two-dimensional dynamics of a quadcopter controlled to reach the origin and we study how different architectures of the guidance and control network affect the stability of the target equilibrium point and the stability margins to time delay. Moreover, we show how to study the robustness to initial conditions of a nominal trajectory, using a Taylor representation of the neurocontrolled neighbouring trajectories.
That's Mine! Learning Ownership Relations and Norms for Robots
Venue: arXiv cs.AI 2019
Year: 2019

The ability for autonomous agents to learn and conform to human norms is crucial for their safety and effectiveness in social environments. While recent work has led to frameworks for the representation and inference of simple social rules, research into norm learning remains at an exploratory stage. Here, we present a robotic system capable of representing, learning, and inferring ownership relations and norms. Ownership is represented as a graph of probabilistic relations between objects and their owners, along with a database of predicate-based norms that constrain the actions permissible on owned objects. To learn these norms and relations, our system integrates (i) a novel incremental norm learning algorithm capable of both one-shot learning and induction from specific examples, (ii) Bayesian inference of ownership relations in response to apparent rule violations, and (iii) percept-based prediction of an object's likely owners. Through a series of simulated and real-world experiments, we demonstrate the competence and flexibility of the system in performing object manipulation tasks that require a variety of norms to be followed, laying the groundwork for future research into the acquisition and application of social norms.
OMNIA Faster R-CNN: Detection in the wild through dataset merging and soft distillation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Object detectors tend to perform poorly in new or open domains, and require exhaustive yet costly annotations from fully labeled datasets. We aim at benefiting from several datasets with different categories but without additional labelling, not only to increase the number of categories detected, but also to take advantage from transfer learning and to enhance domain independence. Our dataset merging procedure starts with training several initial Faster R-CNN on the different datasets while considering the complementary datasets' images for domain adaptation. Similarly to self-training methods, the predictions of these initial detectors mitigate the missing annotations on the complementary datasets. The final OMNIA Faster R-CNN is trained with all categories on the union of the datasets enriched by predictions. The joint training handles unsafe targets with a new classification loss called SoftSig in a softly supervised way. Experimental results show that in the case of fashion detection for images in the wild, merging Modanet with COCO increases the final performance from 45.5% to 57.4% in mAP. Applying our soft distillation to the task of detection with domain shift between GTA and Cityscapes enables to beat the state-of-the-art by 5.3 points. Our methodology could unlock object detection for real-world applications without immense datasets.
Wireless Network Intelligence at the Edge
Venue: arXiv cs.IT 2019
Year: 2019

Fueled by the availability of more data and computing power, recent breakthroughs in cloud-based machine learning (ML) have transformed every aspect of our lives from face recognition and medical diagnosis to natural language processing. However, classical ML exerts severe demands in terms of energy, memory and computing resources, limiting their adoption for resource constrained edge devices. The new breed of intelligent devices and high-stake applications (drones, augmented/virtual reality, autonomous systems, etc.), requires a novel paradigm change calling for distributed, low-latency and reliable ML at the wireless network edge (referred to as edge ML). In edge ML, training data is unevenly distributed over a large number of edge nodes, which have access to a tiny fraction of the data. Moreover training and inference is carried out collectively over wireless links, where edge devices communicate and exchange their learned models (not their private data). In a first of its kind, this article explores key building blocks of edge ML, different neural network architectural splits and their inherent tradeoffs, as well as theoretical and technical enablers stemming from a wide range of mathematical disciplines. Finally, several case studies pertaining to various high-stake applications are presented demonstrating the effectiveness of edge ML in unlocking the full potential of 5G and beyond.
SeFM: A Sequential Feature Point Matching Algorithm for Object 3D Reconstruction
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

3D reconstruction is a fundamental issue in many applications and the feature point matching problem is a key step while reconstructing target objects. Conventional algorithms can only find a small number of feature points from two images which is quite insufficient for reconstruction. To overcome this problem, we propose SeFM a sequential feature point matching algorithm. We first utilize the epipolar geometry to find the epipole of each image. Rotating along the epipole, we generate a set of the epipolar lines and reserve those intersecting with the input image. Next, a rough matching phase, followed by a dense matching phase, is applied to find the matching dot-pairs using dynamic programming. Furthermore, we also remove wrong matching dot-pairs by calculating the validity. Experimental results illustrate that SeFM can achieve around 1,000 to 10,000 times matching dot-pairs, depending on individual image, compared to conventional algorithms and the object reconstruction with only two images is semantically visible. Moreover, it outperforms conventional algorithms, such as SIFT and SURF, regarding precision and recall.
Improving Retrieval-Based Question Answering with Deep Inference Models
Venue: arXiv cs.CL 2019
Year: 2019

Question answering is one of the most important and difficult applications at the border of information retrieval and natural language processing, especially when we talk about complex science questions which require some form of inference to determine the correct answer. In this paper, we present a two-step method that combines information retrieval techniques optimized for question answering with deep learning models for natural language inference in order to tackle the multi-choice question answering in the science domain. For each question-answer pair, we use standard retrieval-based models to find relevant candidate contexts and decompose the main problem into two different sub-problems. First, assign correctness scores for each candidate answer based on the context using retrieval models from Lucene. Second, we use deep learning architectures to compute if a candidate answer can be inferred from some well-chosen context consisting of sentences retrieved from the knowledge base. In the end, all these solvers are combined using a simple neural network to predict the correct answer. This proposed two-step model outperforms the best retrieval-based solver by over 3% in absolute accuracy.
A new system-wide diversity measure for recommendations with efficient algorithms
Venue: arXiv cs.IR 2019
Year: 2019

Recommender systems often operate on item catalogs clustered by genres, and user bases that have natural clusterings into user types by demographic or psychographic attributes. Prior work on system-wide diversity has mainly focused on defining intent-aware metrics among such categories and maximizing relevance of the resulting recommendations, but has not combined the notions of diversity from the two point of views of items and users. In this work, (1) we introduce two new system-wide diversity metrics to simultaneously address the problems of diversifying the categories of items that each user sees, diversifying the types of users that each item is shown, and maintaining high recommendation quality. We model this as a subgraph selection problem on the bipartite graph of candidate recommendations between users and items. (2) In the case of disjoint item categories and user types, we show that the resulting problems can be solved exactly in polynomial time, by a reduction to a minimum cost flow problem. (3) In the case of non-disjoint categories and user types, we prove NP-completeness of the objective and present efficient approximation algorithms using the submodularity of the objective. (4) Finally, we validate the effectiveness of our algorithms on the MovieLens-1m and Netflix datasets, and show that algorithms designed for our objective also perform well on sales diversity metrics, and even some intent-aware diversity metrics. Our experimental results justify the validity of our new composite diversity metrics.
Learning Transferable Adversarial Examples via Ghost Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

Recent development of adversarial attacks has proven that ensemble-based methods outperform traditional, non-ensemble ones in black-box attack. However, as it is computationally prohibitive to acquire a family of diverse models, these methods achieve inferior performance constrained by the limited number of models to be ensembled. In this paper, we propose Ghost Networks to improve the transferability of adversarial examples. The critical principle of ghost networks is to apply feature-level perturbations to an existing model to potentially create a huge set of diverse models. After that, models are subsequently fused by longitudinal ensemble. Extensive experimental results suggest that the number of networks is essential for improving the transferability of adversarial examples, but it is less necessary to independently train different networks and ensemble them in an intensive aggregation way. Instead, our work can be used as a computationally cheap and easily applied plug-in to improve adversarial approaches both in single-model and multi-model attack, compatible with residual and non-residual networks. By reproducing the NeurIPS 2017 adversarial competition, our method outperforms the No.1 attack submission by a large margin, demonstrating its effectiveness and efficiency. Code is available at https://github.com/LiYingwei/ghost-network.
Deep Learning in Downlink Coordinated Multipoint in New Radio Heterogeneous Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.NI 2019
Year: 2019

We propose a method to improve the performance of the downlink coordinated multipoint (DL CoMP) in heterogeneous fifth generation New Radio (NR) networks. The standards-compliant method is based on the construction of a surrogate CoMP trigger function using deep learning. The cooperating set is a single-tier of sub-6 GHz heterogeneous base stations operating in the frequency division duplex mode (i.e., no channel reciprocity). This surrogate function enhances the downlink user throughput distribution through online learning of non-linear interactions of features and lower bias learning models. In simulation, the proposed method outperforms industry standards in a realistic and scalable heterogeneous cellular environment.
The Gap Between Model-Based and Model-Free Methods on the Linear Quadratic Regulator: An Asymptotic Viewpoint
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

The effectiveness of model-based versus model-free methods is a long-standing question in reinforcement learning (RL). Motivated by recent empirical success of RL on continuous control tasks, we study the sample complexity of popular model-based and model-free algorithms on the Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). We show that for policy evaluation, a simple model-based plugin method requires asymptotically less samples than the classical least-squares temporal difference (LSTD) estimator to reach the same quality of solution; the sample complexity gap between the two methods can be at least a factor of state dimension. For policy evaluation, we study a simple family of problem instances and show that nominal (certainty equivalence principle) control also requires several factors of state and input dimension fewer samples than the policy gradient method to reach the same level of control performance on these instances. Furthermore, the gap persists even when employing commonly used baselines. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first theoretical result which demonstrates a separation in the sample complexity between model-based and model-free methods on a continuous control task.
3D Scene Parsing via Class-Wise Adaptation
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

We propose the method that uses only computer graphics datasets to parse the real world 3D scenes. 3D scene parsing based on semantic segmentation is required to implement the categorical interaction in the virtual world. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) have recently shown state-of-theart performance on computer vision tasks including semantic segmentation. However, collecting and annotating a huge amount of data are needed to train CNNs. Especially in the case of semantic segmentation, annotating pixel by pixel takes a significant amount of time and often makes mistakes. In contrast, computer graphics can generate a lot of accurate annotated data and easily scale up by changing camera positions, textures and lights. Despite these advantages, models trained on computer graphics datasets cannot perform well on real data, which is known as the domain shift. To address this issue, we first present that depth modal and synthetic noise are effective to reduce the domain shift. Then, we develop the class-wise adaptation which obtains domain invariant features of CNNs. To reduce the domain shift, we create computer graphics rooms with a lot of props, and provide photo-realistic rendered images.We also demonstrate the application which is combined semantic segmentation with Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). Our application performs accurate 3D scene parsing in real-time on an actual room.
Guided Graph Spectral Embedding: Application to the C. elegans Connectome
Venue: arXiv cs.LG 2019
Year: 2019

Graph spectral analysis can yield meaningful embeddings of graphs by providing insight into distributed features not directly accessible in nodal domain. Recent efforts in graph signal processing have proposed new decompositions-e.g., based on wavelets and Slepians-that can be applied to filter signals defined on the graph. In this work, we take inspiration from these constructions to define a new guided spectral embedding that combines maximizing energy concentration with minimizing modified embedded distance for a given importance weighting of the nodes. We show these optimization goals are intrinsically opposite, leading to a well-defined and stable spectral decomposition. The importance weighting allows to put the focus on particular nodes and tune the trade-off between global and local effects. Following the derivation of our new optimization criterion and its linear approximation, we exemplify the methodology on the C. elegans structural connectome. The results of our analyses confirm known observations on the nematode's neural network in terms of functionality and importance of cells. Compared to Laplacian embedding, the guided approach, focused on a certain class of cells (sensory, inter- and motoneurons), provides more biological insights, such as the distinction between somatic positions of cells, and their involvement in low or high order processing functions.
Accuracy, Uncertainty, and Adaptability of Automatic Myocardial ASL Segmentation using Deep CNN
Venue: arXiv cs.CV 2019
Year: 2019

PURPOSE: To apply deep CNN to the segmentation task in myocardial arterial spin labeled (ASL) perfusion imaging and to develop methods that measure uncertainty and that adapt the CNN model to a specific false positive vs. false negative tradeoff. METHODS: The Monte Carlo dropout (MCD) U-Net was trained on data from 22 subjects and tested on data from 6 heart transplant recipients. Manual segmentation and regional myocardial blood flow (MBF) were available for comparison. We consider two global uncertainty measures, named Dice Uncertainty and MCD Uncertainty, which were calculated with and without the use of manual segmentation, respectively. Tversky loss function with a hyperparameter $β$ was used to adapt the model to a specific false positive vs. false negative tradeoff. RESULTS: The MCD U-Net achieved Dice coefficient of mean(std) = 0.91(0.04) on the test set. MBF measured using automatic segmentations was highly correlated to that measured using the manual segmentation ($R^2$ = 0.96). Dice Uncertainty and MCD Uncertainty were in good agreement ($R^2$ = 0.64). As $β$ increased, the false positive rate systematically decreased and false negative rate systematically increased. CONCLUSION: We demonstrate the feasibility of deep CNN for automatic segmentation of myocardial ASL, with good accuracy. We also introduce two simple methods for assessing model uncertainty. Finally, we demonstrate the ability to adapt the CNN model to a specific false positive vs. false negative tradeoff. These findings are directly relevant to automatic segmentation in quantitative cardiac MRI and are broadly applicable to automatic segmentation problems in diagnostic imaging.
Compressed Distributed Gradient Descent: Communication-Efficient Consensus over Networks
Venue: arXiv cs.DC 2019
Year: 2019

Network consensus optimization has received increasing attention in recent years and has found important applications in many scientific and engineering fields. To solve network consensus optimization problems, one of the most well-known approaches is the distributed gradient descent method (DGD). However, in networks with slow communication rates, DGD's performance is unsatisfactory for solving high-dimensional network consensus problems due to the communication bottleneck. This motivates us to design a communication-efficient DGD-type algorithm based on compressed information exchanges. Our contributions in this paper are three-fold: i) We develop a communication-efficient algorithm called amplified-differential compression DGD (ADC-DGD) and show that it converges under {\em any} unbiased compression operator; ii) We rigorously prove the convergence performances of ADC-DGD and show that they match with those of DGD without compression; iii) We reveal an interesting phase transition phenomenon in the convergence speed of ADC-DGD. Collectively, our findings advance the state-of-the-art of network consensus optimization theory.